Agnes tried to make her peace with the idea, but it kept her awake until long after midnight.
•
It was with gritty eyes and tired limbs that Agnes boarded the train the following morning, in the cool before the sun had risen far in the sky. The hotel manager had helped her plan her route: Colombo to Kandy, Kandy to the new railway station at Nawalapitiya, and then she would have to engage a carriage to take her to Valentine Estate. She left one trunk behind, and took her light one with her. She had no need for fancy gowns and she couldn’t bear to wear corsets in this heat. Sensible, lightweight clothes, gloves and a broad-brimmed hat were all she needed. She slid her trunk into the baggage rack and found her place aboard the train. The seat was hard, and the table too far from her to be comfortable, but she had a window. Through it she could see the elaborate ironwork around the roof beams of the station and the local attendants in their calf-length pants and white sashes. A large-framed man with big hands took the seat beside her, inching into her space. Agnes leaned against the window. A half-dozen other passengers found their places in her carriage, including a pair of rosy-cheeked twin girls, who chattered animatedly to their mother in a language Agnes didn’t recognise. The train let off a hoot, steam hissed and clouded around them, and they began to move.
Agnes had planned to read or to doze on the journey to Kandy. After all, it was longer than four hours. But the scenery was so spectacular and lovely that she didn’t want to miss a second of it. They chugged out through the town and surrounding villages, across thundering bridges over wide rivers, through densely wooded expanses of land where the bright green branches and leaves scratched against the train windows, up through hills and around dramatic rocky brows, through tunnels so deep and long that she began to wonder if they would ever see the other side. She changed trains at Kandy, too quickly to take in the sights and sounds. She glimpsed a man riding an elephant as the train pulled away, and regretted heartily not being able to see it up close. This was a much smaller train with only one other person in her carriage, a man with a huge ginger beard who spent the journey scribbling in an accounts book and swearing every time the train jolted him and made him blot his ink. They travelled up and up, and the scenery dropped away on either side: steep hillsides with terraced fields of bright, brilliant green. By the time they reached the tiny village of Nawalapitiya, the air had grown misty and grey. She alighted and looked around the deserted platform, then a sense of panic gripped her. She had thought she would see porters, a ticket office where she could ask about a carriage, but there was nothing but the platform. She was walking towards the front of the train to ask the driver, when the bearded man who had been sitting in her carriage swept past her.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she called. ‘What is the best way to travel to the Valentine Estate?’
He turned, frowning. ‘Does Saul know you are coming?’
‘Aye, be right,’ she lied. ‘I’m his niece. Though the timing may be … unexpected.’
He tapped his hat. ‘I have business dealings with Saul. My driver knows the way. I would be pleased to offer you his service and my carriage, given you are family.’
‘My good fortune to meet you, sir!’ she said. ‘What name do you go by?’
‘I am Daniel Fitzpatrick. I have a business up here hiring natives for work on plantations.’ Here he frowned again. ‘Not that I’ve sent any up to Saul for quite some time.’
‘Truly, Mister Fitzpatrick, you have made a very long day much more bearable.’
‘Come along, then.’
She followed him to his bullock-drawn carriage, where he spoke quickly in the native language to his driver, a dark-skinned man in crisp white. Her trunk was loaded on the back, and Fitzpatrick handed her up himself and settled in beside her. The driver dropped him at his own house – an enormous sprawling mansion with a garden that looked almost impenetrable – and took more instructions from Fitzpatrick about where to take her next.
‘Give my best to Saul,’ he said, leaning in the window. ‘Haven’t clapped eyes on him for months.’
She wanted to ask if Genevieve was there at the Valentine Estate, but thought it might give away that she wasn’t his niece at all. ‘I shall, Mister Fitzpatrick. And thank you.’
She settled back in the carriage, and it began to jolt along the rough road. Soon, she was surrounded on all sides by bushes and branches. A bug flew in the window and landed on her dress and she shrieked and brushed it off, then felt embarrassed. She had simply never seen a bug that big, and longed for tiny, English bugs. The sun fell lower in the sky; there was no way she would be at Valentine Estate before four in the afternoon. She was tired, mortally tired, and uncertain, and afraid, and the journey seemed to be taking forever.
At length, the road ahead of them opened up and they descended towards a towering stone-and-iron gate, with a wall running off in either direction. From here, she could see miles of green hills, the sun falling towards them. The air had cooled rapidly. In among the hills and trees sat buildings and houses dotted far apart from each other. The carriage rattled down the road and slowed in a large clearing in front of the gate. It steered around until it was facing back the way they had come, then stopped. She heard the driver climb down and walk to the back to fetch her trunk.
Agnes had hoped she might be let off at the front door, and as she stepped down from the carriage she said to the driver, ‘Where is the house?’
‘Valentine Estate,’ he said.
‘In there?’ She pointed through the wrought-iron bars.
He nodded, and pointed too. ‘Valentine Estate.’
‘Aye that’s all well, but will you wait for me here, please? Just in case there’s nobody home?’
He smiled and nodded.
‘Wait here.’
‘We here,’ he said.
‘No … wait here. You stay here? Just for a few minutes.’
He nodded vigorously.
Agnes left her trunk by the side of the road and unlatched the gate. She walked no more than a hundred feet before she heard the carriage rattling away.
She spun round. ‘Hoy! Wait!’ she cried, but the driver had already thundered off up the hill. She ran after him for a few moments, but the hill was steep and she was weary to her marrow. She turned back to the gate, scooped up her trunk and trudged along the long, overgrown driveway, hoping to see a house soon.
It came into view around the next bend. Wide and white, stone and plaster, with broad front stairs and a verandah that looked as though it ran all the way around. Fruit trees that clearly hadn’t been pruned in a long time grew either side of the stairs. Wooden railings, carved with Ceylonese designs, had been left unpainted and now swelled with moisture; some had rotted right through. Weeds flooded the garden.
Agnes’s heart fell all the way to her toes. This house did not look inhabited, just like the house in Colombo. That meant she was miles and miles from anywhere, without means to return to the village – and, quite honestly, barely any idea which way the village lay – and evening was approaching. She took a deep breath. If the house was deserted, then so be it. She would find a place to sleep on the verandah; it would be just like sleeping on the deck of the ship. Tomorrow she could find her way back. She told herself not to think about the bugs. Or the wild animals.
Her shadow was long at her feet as she trudged towards the house, then up the stairs where she lay down her trunk and knocked loudly. Above the large wooden doors was an intricately carved wooden fanlight. She could see only darkness inside, but outside was still daylight, so she took heart.
Then she heard footsteps, and relief flooded her. She braced, wondering if she was about to come face to face with Genevieve.
The door swung in. A curiously handsome man, perhaps late in his forties, glowered down at her. His black hair was liberally streaked grey, and had grown almost to his shoulders in messy curls. He looked as though a razor hadn’t been near his chin in a week. ‘Who are you? What is it?’
‘Are you Saul Valentine, sir?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am. What do you want from me?’
‘I have come to find Genevieve Breckby.’
He laughed without smiling, then stopped abruptly, his jaw pulling tight. ‘Genevieve isn’t here. She left me two years, five months and twelve days ago.’
Agnes forced her knees not to give under her. ‘Can you tell me then, sir, where she is now?’
‘Australia. Who are you?’
Australia. Australia. Agnes fought to breathe. She had crossed the ocean for nothing.
‘Well, lass? What is your name?’
Her words spilled out, almost beyond her control. ‘I am Agnes Resolute. I am a foundling. But I believe myself to be her daughter and I have come all this way … all this way …’
At this, he softened. His hazel gaze moved over her face, as if looking for Genevieve’s resemblance in her lips and eyes. ‘Genevieve’s daughter, eh?’ he said, almost tenderly. ‘Well, then. You’d better come in.’
CHAPTER 17
Agnes followed Saul Valentine inside the house. One large room greeted them, with round pillars that held up a high ceiling. Doors folded open on the wide verandah, which faced the setting sun, and a cool breeze came in from across the green hills. The floors were stone, without rugs or mats. In fact, the house seemed curiously empty, with furniture grouped in little islands here and there. He led her to one of the islands: two chairs and a low table, beside a wooden cabinet. Here he poured himself a whiskey and offered one to her.
‘No thank you, sir,’ she said, as she sat. ‘But I would be so grateful for tea.’
‘Tea,’ he said, deadpan. ‘Huh. Very well. I can’t stand the stuff myself. Given that it’s nearly ruined me.’ He smiled, a baring of wolfish teeth. ‘Nearly. Not completely.’ He rang a bell and a few moments later a painfully thin servant appeared.
‘Mahesh, tea for the lady. Do we have any food in the house? Give her some. I don’t know.’ He waved Mahesh away. ‘You know what to do.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Mahesh said, and disappeared further into the house.
‘He’s my last man,’ Saul said. ‘I expect you feel sorry for me, to find me in such a dissipated state. I assume Valois told you all about me and that’s why you are here.’
Agnes shuddered at the mention of Valois’s name. ‘No, sir. Rashmi told me where you are.’
‘Ha! Did she send you to stab me or poison me?’
‘Neither, sir.’
‘Stop calling me sir. My name is Saul.’ He swallowed his whiskey and poured another. Agnes noticed for the first time that his vest was dirty, as though he had dropped food on it and not bothered to wipe it off. She watched him for a little while, an idea forming in her mind.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘You have that look on you. I know that look on a woman. You are judging me.’
‘Far from it, sir. I mean Saul. Far from it. I am wondering if there is any possibility you are my father.’
He drew his brow down. ‘Huh. Well, there’s a question I didn’t see coming. Tell me, Agnes Resolute, how old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
He performed calculations in his head, then said, ‘No, I am not your father. Your father must be Ernest Shawe or Wilburforce Peacock. Let’s hope, for your sake, it’s the latter. Shawe is quite an unpleasant fellow. He once punched me in the jaw. Loosened one of my teeth.’ Then, quieter. ‘Though, I suppose, I did steal his wife.’
Agnes bit back disappointment. Finding her father might have been a small consolation for not finding her mother. ‘How do you know that one of them is my father?’ she probed.
‘Because the two of them were quite mad for your mother twenty years ago, and I’m led to believe she strung them both along for a time. Her marriage to Shawe was forced upon her by her parents.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Their folly.’ He lapsed into surly silence.
Agnes considered him in the dying light of the day. Having met Valois, and having heard Rashmi’s account of Saul, she had expected him to be quite different. More like the awful Glynn brothers, who thought the world belonged to them. Saul Valentine seemed rather more convinced that the world had fled his grasp.
Tea arrived, served with nothing more than bread and treacle. She ate it carefully, still managing to get sticky fingers. The tea revived her a little. Saul asked her to explain how she had come so far, and she did so through mouthfuls of food. He smiled at her admiringly, interjecting laughter and expressions of surprise. When she finished, he told her she had Genevieve’s spirit, and this cheered her more than she could express.
‘I need to hear good things about her,’ she said. ‘Everywhere I have gone, I have heard only of her faults.’
‘Good things about Genevieve, eh?’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘Well, then. Everything about her is good. What am I to choose?’
Agnes’s spirit lifted. ‘What did you love best about her?’ she asked, then regretted it instantly when his expression became pained.
‘What do I love best about her? For I haven’t stopped loving her.’
‘Aye, then, sir.’
‘Her fierce intellect. Her snowy skin. Her refusal to be constrained—’ Here his voice caught in his throat. ‘Oh, away with you. I am too drunk and too melancholy for this.’
‘I am sorry to cause you pain,’ she said.
‘You didn’t cause my pain,’ he replied. ‘She did. Now, it is too far back to the village and I wouldn’t trust anyone who offered you a room there anyway. You will stay here this night, but ask me no more questions. I will sit here and watch the sun sink behind the hills, and drink myself into a stupor again. Tomorrow, when I am sober and can trust my voice not to break, I will tell you about Genevieve.’
‘Thank you, Saul,’ she said, relieved. ‘I am so very tired.’
‘I’ll get Mahesh to take you to Genevieve’s room.’ Again, the sad expression. ‘I haven’t touched it. It is exactly as she left it, the day she …’ He gulped some more whiskey, then called, ‘Mahesh!’
Mahesh came and picked up her trunk. ‘This way,’ he said.
‘Goodnight, Saul,’ Agnes said.
He nodded, waved her away, and she followed Mahesh out of the huge room and down a short corridor that hooked to the left, opening ahead of her into a low-roofed bed chamber.
Mahesh dropped her trunk on the ground and bowed to her. She noted his clothes, like Saul’s, were unwashed.
‘Thank you, Mahesh,’ she said. ‘You are a good man to stay with your master through difficult times.’
He smiled wearily. ‘He has been good to me. Not all I have served have been so kind.’ He gave her a pointed look, and she supposed he meant Genevieve. ‘I stay to look after him. He has nobody else.’
Mahesh withdrew, pulling the door closed behind him. Agnes looked around the room. The bed lay under a heavy mosquito net. A rug was spread between bed and dresser. A large mirror framed in carved wood hung from the wall, and an empty bookshelf sat beside the window. The roof beams were visible, as was the dust on them. When Saul said he hadn’t touched it, he was telling the truth. Agnes went to Genevieve’s dresser, her pulse speeding guiltily. Genevieve’s hairbrush. Agnes unpinned her hair then stood in front of her mother’s mirror, brushing her hair with her mother’s hairbrush. ‘My mother’s hairbrush,’ she said. She picked up a little perfume bottle, glass wrapped in filigree, and squeezed the puffer. A spray of soft floral scent dampened her wrist, though a little stale from heat and time. Still, she inhaled it deeply. So, this what Genevieve smelled like. Agnes opened Genevieve’s long wooden jewellery box and saw strings of beads, rings and bracelets. In the very bottom she found a tarnished locket, and sprung it open to see two miniature portraits facing each other. One was Genevieve, perhaps a little younger than when Agnes had seen her in Hatby, with her golden curls and a merry pink glow on her cheeks. The other looked familiar, and it took a few seconds of concentration to realise that this was a young Marianna. Her hair a shade paler than G
enevieve’s, her nose thinner and longer, her expression more serious.
A twinge of regret passed through Agnes, then. Marianna had once been a young, beautiful woman with a serene and level gaze. Now she was trapped inside her own home by her fears, couldn’t sleep for nightmares. No, that wasn’t right. The dreams that woke her were ‘so unspeakably lovely that waking up makes one want to cry for disappointment’. Agnes would never forget her saying that, never forget the gentle compassion it had aroused in her heart.
Agnes snapped the locket shut. Her weariness was making her sentimental, perhaps, but she longed to be back in the house at Belgrave Place. With Julius and Marianna, and even Annie, Daisy and Pamela. She allowed herself to imagine it. Would they think it strange if she returned as Julius’s wife? Would Marianna? No, she would be delighted. Agnes wouldn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to read to her any more. Or maybe she would, out of love instead of obligation.
These thoughts were getting her nowhere. It seemed as though the bread and tea was all the sustenance she was going to be offered, and she had travelled many miles today on so little sleep that she was dead on her feet. She took the locket and fastened it around her neck. Saul wouldn’t miss it. He was too drunk to know what was here and what wasn’t.
Agnes shed her dress and crawled into her mother’s bed. The sheets smelled musty, and dust itched her nose. She closed her eyes, even though it was only six o’clock. Genevieve slept here, she thought as she burrowed under the silky covers. She closed her hand around the locket, and willed herself to feel close to Genevieve, close to her mother.
But as she drifted off to sleep, it was Marianna who was in her thoughts.
•
In the morning, Agnes rose before the others. The weather had turned gloomy, with thick grey clouds gathering on the horizon and a sticky heat enveloping everything. She opened the doors from the main living area, and stepped out onto the verandah in search of cool air. Rain spat down lightly, and the distant hills were shrouded in a humid haze of mist. The tea plants stood out bright green against the grey. Agnes followed the verandah along and down four steps to an outbuilding. She pushed open the door and found the laundry, hung heavily with spider webs. She backed out, returned up the stairs and into the house, then found her way to the kitchen. Something rotten made the air thick, and she noticed a layer of muck over the range and sink. There was bread in the breadbox and a kettle on the range for tea. She made herself breakfast, and got out of the stinking kitchen as quickly as she could. She took her breakfast on a chair on the verandah, watching the rainclouds roll in. Nobody came.
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